A team of researchers led by Harvard geneticist George Church at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Harvard Medical School has made big strides toward a future in which the predominant chemical factories of the world are colonies of genetically engineered bacteria.

A new study, authored by Collin McCabe, a doctoral student in Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, suggests that increased exposure to disease has played an important role in the evolution of culture in both humans and non-human primates.

Harvard’s Ernst Mayr Library is involved in a collaborative effort to digitize the handwritten journals of ornithologist William Brewster. The collaboration uses crowdsourcing for the transcription and video games as a way to check the work’s accuracy.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology have successfully converted mouse and human skin cells into pain-sensing neurons that respond to a number of stimuli that cause acute and inflammatory distress.

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Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found the cellular origin of the tissue scarring caused by organ damage associated with diabetes, lung disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and other conditions.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have demonstrated that adult cells, reprogrammed into another cell type in a living animal, can remain functional over a long period. The work is an important advance in the effort to develop cell-based therapies for tissue repair, and specifically in the effort to develop improved treatment for diabetes.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Massachusetts General and Boston Children’s hospitals for the first time have used a relatively new gene-editing technique to create what could prove to be an effective technique for blocking HIV from invading and destroying patients’ immune systems.

Faced with stiff competition from an invading species, a Harvard study has found that green anoles evolved larger toe pads equipped with more sticky scales to allow for better climbing in just 20 generations over 15 years.

Led by David Liu, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, a team of Harvard researchers developed a system that uses commercially available molecules called cationic lipids to deliver genome-editing proteins into cells.

Harvard geneticist George Church discussed the future of genetic engineering, including possible technological applications allowing new treatment techniques. He saw the potential to improve human health, revolutionize pest management, and perhaps even bring back the mammoth and other extinct species.